movies Friend Request ★
F
ear and Loathing on Facebook might have made a spiffier title for this ridiculous Lifetime movie disguised as an exercise in social media-savvy horror. The latest from German director Simon Verhoeven (100 Pro) — no relation to Paul, who’s Dutch and competent — Friend Request achieves something I would have considered unimaginable: Replacing It as the summer’s least accomplished work of cinema. Remember 2014’s Unfriended, in which a group of young people is terrorized by the ghost of a classmate who committed suicide? I didn’t think so. Verhoeven sure hopes you don’t. Because this is basically a less-clever version of the same movie. The story unfolds at what appears to be a generic California university. Though this is a German production and that country contains any number of generic universities, the filmmakers journeyed all the way to South Africa to find a university generic enough to pass for one in California. Which I mention solely to suggest the caliber of brainpower behind this project. That’s money that could’ve gone toward frills like, oh, screenwriters who can actually write. As opposed to whatever you want to call what Matthew Ballen, Philip Koch and Verhoeven did here.
Alycia Debnam-Carey stars as a sophomore named Laura. She’s attractive, dates a hunky med student and has lots of friends — both IRL and, more importantly for the purposes of this picture, on Facebook. Or rather, a stand-in designed to protect the filmmakers from copyright infringement claims. If you look closely at characters’ laptops (which is at least as entertaining as paying attention to the plot), you’ll note that, for example, “share” has been changed to “spread” and “like” to “thumbs-up.” Mark Zuckerberg must feel so outwitted. Laura’s idyllic existence goes sideways when a shunned goth student named Marina (Liesl Ahlers) sends her the eponymous message. Laura figures, What’s the harm? and clicks “accept.” The harm, it turns out, is that Marina proves a clingy, creepy stalker, and, when Laura’s had enough and unfriends her, all CGI hell breaks loose. Marina not only hangs herself but also sets herself on fire. At the same time, she somehow films the whole grisly business, then posts the video on Laura’s wall. Say what you will about that supernatural wack job, the chick can multitask. Here’s the funny part: Marina’s spirit or whatever possesses Laura’s friends, forces them to kill themselves and posts videos of
THE ANTISOCIAL NETWORK Zuckerberg’s creation is programmed for evil by a ghost who likes to post in this generic jump-scare-athon.
their deaths on her wall, as well. Touches such as cretinous jump scares, swarms of computer-generated bugs and printers that mysteriously turn themselves on (oh, no, ghost in the machine!) never quite get around to producing goose bumps. Incredibly, the film’s concern isn’t these undeserved deaths but their impact on Laura’s Facebook status. We’re expected to find it frightening as her online friend count plummets, to watch in terror as the number updates, like a time bomb’s clock counting down. This is a film in which a goth from beyond the grave exacts revenge by — are you sitting down? — making her victim less popular. The horror!
Not a second in Friend Request’s 92 minutes makes a lick of sense, transcends formula trash or generates anything approaching genuine suspense or surprise. You’ve seen the same misfit-can’t-hack-college-and-offsherself routine rehashed on Lifetime for decades, albeit with fewer haunted HewlettPackard products. And you’ve got to love the predictable tagline: “Evil Is Trending.” I don’t know about that, but one thing this bummer of a summer has proved when it comes to movies is that mediocrity sure as hell is. RI C K KI S O N AK
80 MOVIES
SEVEN DAYS
09.27.17-10.04.17
SEVENDAYSVT.COM
Brigsby Bear ★★★★
T
his decade’s crop of film comedies about arrested development offers plenty of fodder for a think piece on helicopter parenting, but Brigsby Bear takes both concepts to new levels. In this wispy indie comedy, Kyle Mooney of “Saturday Night Live” is so convincing as a twentysomething man-child, his performance so deadpan, vulnerable and free of mugging, that it’s tough to laugh at him. We may feel like we’re mocking a real kid when we ought to be applauding his precocious imagination. And yet … this isn’t a kid. That discomfort is what lifts Brigsby Bear — directed by Dave McCary and written by Mooney and Kevin Costello — above the usual crop of quirky fest favorites. By turns funny, uplifting and a little queasy-making, the film sustains that tension for a while — before, ultimately, taking a too-predictable route. The movie opens with Mooney’s character, James, living in what appears to be a post-global-disaster bunker. His world revolves around the weekly delivery of a new tape of “Brigsby Bear Adventures,” a lowtech, ’80s-style kids’ show that has matured along with him. (Recent episodes handle topics like advanced math and masturbation.) James’ social circle consists of his protective parents (Mark Hamill and Jane Adams) and other “Brigsby” fans with whom he connects solely online; obsessive dissection of the show is his version of a religion.
BEARLY THERE Mooney plays a man-child with an ursine obsession in McCary’s strange but ultimately slight comedy.
If this whole scenario seems fishy, it should. Early in the film (stop reading now if you don’t want to be spoiled for a big firstact twist), cops burst into the bunker and liberate James from his “parents” — who, it turns out, actually abducted him as a baby. His entire world is a bizarre fabrication, and his real parents await him with open arms, ready to introduce him to life in the 21st century.
Fish-out-of-water — or boy-out-of-bunker — comedy is nothing new; viewers will inevitably be reminded of Blast From the Past and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” Brigsby does milk James’ naïveté for a few jokes, like his dorky repetition of newly learned slang (“dope as shit”). But its real focus is elsewhere: on his refusal to forget about the cheesy homemade TV show he loves. Unable to dismiss “Brigsby” as a product of twisted
minds, James embarks on a quest to give it a proper ending. The film’s deeper joke, in other words, is that James is more like his non-bunker-raised peers than he is unlike them. He quickly connects with a teen (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) who’s well versed in sci-fi fandom. Recognizing “Brigsby” as a potential cult item, the kid gives James the tech tools he needs to make his vision a reality. Brigsby is genuinely sweet, affirming the capacity of imagination to triumph over trauma. Yet it misses opportunities to explore the tensions between “Brigsby”’s creepy origin and its empowering denouement; and between James’ single-minded, unironic fandom and his new friends’ more savvy pop-culture consciousness. Toward the end, this lack of conflict makes the film start to drag. James has a therapist (Claire Danes) who argues that revisiting “Brigsby” is damaging to his psyche, but she’s a straw woman, too easily overcome. Celebrating the power of storytelling is all well and good, but the fact remains that James’ favorite story was used to keep him a prisoner. How many of us are voluntary prisoners, on some level, of narratives that help us avoid real life? A darker, tougher comedy might have shown that, if we hesitate to laugh at James, it’s not because he’s damaged but because he’s us. MARGO T HARRI S O N